Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy

Thomas Carothers, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, gave a lunch lecture at NIMD office this week, in which he pointed out that the US President-elect won the race to the White House on a broad but still only loosely defined agenda of change and that given the underlying structures of U.S. interests in the world we can expect a fair amount of continuity alongside some amount of change.

What could be distilled from his campaign is a clear intention to withdraw from Iraq and to apply more diplomacy to Iran. Although the latter, Carothers said, may not happen immediately, as elections are coming up in Iran and the Obama team may not want to risk strengthening the hand of the current president by initiating negotiations with him now.. Another clear intention, says Carothers, is to close the Guantanamo Bay facility and improve U.S. behavior on other human rights matters in the war on terrorism..

Change of style

One of the most vital changes though is going to be the change in style and tone toward the world. Such an alteration will likely improve the US image in the world. This change of style, Carothers expects, may translate into opportunities for changes in substance over time.

Many aspects of US foreign policy will not be easy to change given certain domestic political realities and the fact that some problems are deeply entrenched out in the world. Although Obama will be the first US President to consider climate change as an actual threat, getting substantial measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the US Congress will nevertheless be difficult given the strong role of U.S. business interests. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict will not be amerable to any easy or quick solutions given the state of both Palestinian politics and Israeli politics. The US government will probably tend to still be not very helpful on various international law issues, like the International Criminal Court, given the longstanding U.S. hesitation about many international legal commitments. The alliances made during and for the ‘War on Terror’ can not be changed easily or quickly either. The simplified view of good versus evil, as used in Bush’s foreign policy, has sunk in deep in US politics. Changing this specific vision will be as difficult as changing the US tendency to see itself in almost messianic terms as the natural global leader.

US Democracy Assistance

Obama has not said much in his campaign about democracy assistance. It is clear though that democracy support efforts need to be taken away from the close association with Iraq, and that “regime change” should no longer be seen as a the default approach to democracy policy. Finding a constructive way to incorporate democracy concerns into US policy toward major countries and regions like Russia, China and the Middle East will be hard given the other security and economic interests at stake. At the same time, the Obama administration will certainly look for ways to support democracy in many parts of Africa, Latin America and other developing regions.

G. W. Bush, Carothers notes, did substantially increase US foreign aid. Obama, in his campaign, promised to double the aid money, but that is one campaign promise that almost certainly will not happen, warns Carothers given the budget pressures. Obama has not yet shown whether he will be a true enthusiast of foreign aid, or aid for democracy and governance. In general, al might turn out to be more of a realist in his foreign policy than expected by the world.

Will the US in the coming presidency remain a lone superpower (Huntington, Foreign Affairs, 1998) or develop a strategy directed to a more multilateral approach? Carothers comments dryly that although Obama seems to have a genuine sensitivity toward the world and an understanding of the need for a more cooperative US approach, the US as an international actor is simply not very multilateralist by tradition. For that reason, and others, European should be cautious in their hopes for dramatic change in US policy in the several years ahead.